The Collegium is a theocratic federal republic, of sorts, made up of aristocratic kingdoms or a unitary democratic state, depending on who you ask, meant to protect the universal interests of the Yuhwan religious faith across the galaxy. It is an awkward arrangement whose only inheritance from a long period of rule by an international military force later turned piratical warlords called the Mercenary Cabal is iron mountains of materiel meant for an apocalyptic war with the UN that never happened and an uncompetitive heavy industry almost monomaniacally focused on advanced weapons and shipbuilding. To this day it is dogged by accusations and conspiracy theories that the defeated mercenary empire survives as a criminal underworld under the mazes of the Collegium’s byzantine political edifice, rather substantiated by the forensic fingerprints of Siyavashan manufacturing found on pirate, bandit, and disreputable mercenary weapons across the Verge.

Genre: John Wick, Bodacious Space Pirates, and Project Wingman in a decaying post-Soviet Joseon Dynasty Austria-Hungary

Subgenre: Zoroastrian-Christianity with Taoist Characteristics

Government Type: Theocratic Federation
Ideology: Yuhwaism
Economy: Mercantile Power

Traits
(+) The War Machine
(+) Admiralty
(+) Fanatics
(+) Skunkworks
(+) Merchant Marine
(+) Legal Red-Tailed Hawk
(+) Merchant of Death
(+) Little Metal Mans
(+) Blackbeard 2525

(-) UN Sanctioned List
(-) Dirty Cops
(-) Second Amendment Problems
(-) Italian Government
(-) Offshoring
(-) Five Year Plan

2714 OOB

The Sublime Yuhwan College of Nations including the Pious Common Kingship of the Hoopoewood and the Sanctified Tsintsar Crown of Yuhwasattva Vãduva
	Rzeczpospolita
	Collegium
	Gyerim-Covasna (Colloquial)
Yuhwan Starburst	Regular and Republican Ensign
	Seal of the Eoraha
	Motto: ýezî drujem vêñnghaitî" ; ("The Righteous will smite the Liar.")
Anthem
	Yatha Ahu Vairyo
Royal Anthems
	Saka March
	System Map
Regular and Republican Capitals	Main: ; Tyritake ; Vyšehrad ; Orakzai ; Soreaobol (Auxiliary) ;
Royal Capitals	Soreaobol (Gyerim) ; Arad (Covasna) ; Artashat (Tao)
Official languages	Liturgical Arshan ; Koine Yavanan ; Sanskrit ; High Gushan
	Other spoken languages:; Gyerimean Sakan, Low Gushan, Vaspurakan
Religion	Western Sangha Yuhwaism (State Ideology)
	Other religions: Amalism
Demonym	Yuhwan, Dahae (derogatory)
Government	Federal Theocracy
- Eoraha
- Marshal of the Sejm	Yushin Sobeiski
- Grand Domestic
Legislatures	Three Common Legislatures with Floating Chambers
- Floating Chambers	Looya Jiirga ; Irregular Committees
- College of Magi	Anjoman of Athravan ; Envoys of the Temples ; Circles of the Parishes ; Circle of Astrologers
- College of Princes	Venerable Worthies ; Worthies of Kwarrah ; Divinely Adored Worthies ; House of the Rightly Guided ; Defenders of the Faith ; Extinct Races ;
- Celestial Sejm	Behdin Elders ; Chamber of Deputies
History
- First Looya Jiirga
- First Anjoman
- College of Princes Founded
- White Turban Rebellion
- Treaty of Altai Krai
- Treaty of
Population
- 1000 NE	70 Million/70 Housing
Territorial Regions:	16
Theme:	Undeveloped
Currency	Drachma ; Touman ;
Patron Saint	Saint Eunha
Patron Yazata	Yazd Tavus
Preceded by
	← Mercenary Cabal ; ← Faryunid-Mashanid Dynasty ; ← Western Gushan

Once upon a time back when Tigers used to smoke, the Faerie Air Force was assembled to battle automated alien war machines over the orbitals of Siyavash, the Kshatriya Star. While created by an international effort, it was primarily composed in great part by mercenary companies that had been founded by second tier Earth powers to advance their interests in the warrior star. When the great nemesis was defeated once and for all these mercenaries dreamed of a galaxy where they ruled, and rather than disband, turned their efforts outwards against the UN Mandate system in a campaign of guerre de course; fighting wage-war on behalf of fellow destabilizing powers, gun-running to even the pettiest conflicts, and stoking piracy across the Verge. They were called, and took the honor of being named, the Mercenary Cabal.

When the reformed UN rose from the ink of the Ares Proclamation, the proteges of Admiral DeGrasse decided to strike at one of the hearts of instability in the Verge. They could not have timed their moment more aptly, for as the Sanctions Fleet thundered down the jump lines to Siyavash, the restive nations of Siyavash erupted in the White Turban Rebellion against their ostensible protectors.

Attacked from within and without, the Cabal fought ferociously but was soon utterly defeated. The Marpigan of Gyerim and the Kingdom of Covasna marshalled their vast armies raised at the behest of Faerie Air Force against the Cabal’s downwell military-industrial complex while the UN Sanctions squadrons symbolically bombed the last Mercenary holdouts on Faerie Moon, ironically burying them in the same alien architecture from which the ancient Nemesis had once sortied.

Decapitated and broken, the survivors of the Mercenary Cabal fled to the shadows while the Collegium raised the banner of Yuhwa and the white flag of peace over the Kshatriya star. The UN Sanctions Fleet for its part, after symbolically bombing the last Mercenary Cabal holdouts on Faerie Moon – ironically burying them in the same cosmodrones the ancient Nemesis had once sortied from – and a tense staredown with the battleline of ancient pre-dreadnought battleships the natives inherited from the old Faerie Air Force, accepted the ceasefire and burned back for Gateway victorious.

The Collegium is a federation of sorts, a theocratic commonwealth of sovereign kingdoms, republics, and tribal nations governed by common Yuhwan religious institutions and the sway of an elective universal theocrat: the Eoraha. More religious union than a nation-state – and difficult to distinguish from the wider Yuhwan faith – the Collegium is a sluggish strategic actor that can be moved only by torturous political contrivances and protocol which are interminably evolving in ever more complicated compromises. As of 2714 the Collegium totters through yet another chronic bout of political paralysis since the passage of the last Eoraha in 2710, with the Circle of Magi unable to convene a Looya Jiirga to elect the next Eoraha as points of protocol are as usual weaponized in proxy battles over doctrinal discord.

It is whispered that the Mercenary Cabal was not truly defeated in spirit, merely in body, and yet lives within the sclerotic shadow of the Collegium. Such rumors are usually the realm of conspiratorial thinking, but they are vindicated by the fingerprints of Siyavashian manufacture on pirate ships and bandit weapons across the Verge.

Economy

Domestic Economy: [$800] $1000 (Mercantile Base) -$200 (Offshoring)

TEU Cap: 500

Active Freighters: $5,000

Stability

Technology

Unique

Magsail

Mostly found on unmanned freight drones making slow circuits where running cost is of greater import than transit speed, magsails allow for travel between jump points with extremely limited fuel burn. Unfortunately, they are also slow. A ship travelling under magsail propulsion does not burn deployment range per jump, but transit times are doubled. (one jump every 2 weeks). Also, if somehow surprised into tactical combat while underway, the equipped ship's acceleration value will start at 0 and increase by 1 every turn as the magsail array is reeled in and the primary fusion torch brought up to full power.

Pilferer ($25)

Equipped in various extremely questionable ways by an entire nation of jail-cell lawyers, the so-called Pilferer is an ENTIRELY LEGITIMATE VEHICLE OF COMMERCE. As you can see from this manifest it carries exactly 1 TEU of cargo at maximum security at all times and I find your allegations that my ship can be used as a vessel of piracy to be an insult. Am I being detained, officer?
Acts as a Freighter (always effective security 4), Police Ship or Corsair. Armed with a size-1 weapon of no more than $10 value. If used as a freighter, does not have upkeep.

Generics

2174 Game Start

1.) Talons (Vergetech): Conversions of shuttles into war machines have been a constant tendency on the frontier, not very fast or durable they are armed with both a point defense lasers and size 1 missile launcher. (Cost $12)

2.) Booster Pods: Allows initial launch of fighters towards the range band of their choice away from their carrier. (War Machine)

2.) Super-Capacitors: In the start of battle allows point defense lasers to be fired once as a single size 1 laser against a ship. (Admiralty)

3.) Cruiser Defense Guns: Gives all cruisers an additional weapon slot that can only be used for point defense systems (PDL, coilguns, etc)

Military

[$8,000 Total]: $6000 Starting Military + $2000 (Little Metal Mans)

6x Saoshyant Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleships [$594/Upkeep: $125] = $3,564
4x White Yaksha Class Armored Carriers [$315/Upkeep: $52] = $1,260
1x Royal Yacht Hoopoe [$114/Upkeep: $23]
1x Odette II Camouflaged Cruiser [$168/Upkeep: $15]
25x Privateers [$64/Upkeep: $6] = $1,600
45x Aerospace Fighters [$10/Upkeep: $1] = $450
20x Swordfish (Talons) [$12/Upkeep: $1] = $240
5x Replenishment Ships [$20/Upkeep: $2] = $100
3x Scout [$30/Upkeep: $3] = $90
9x Huscarl Brigades [$45/Upkeep: $9] = $405
2x Emergency Services Cohort [$5/Upkeep: $1] = $10

Regular and Republican Cosmoforce

"A navy is essentially and necessarily aristocratic. True as may be the political principles for which we are now contending they can never be practically applied or even admitted on board ship, out of port, or off soundings. This may seem a hardship, but it is nevertheless the simplest of truths. Whilst the ships sent forth by the Congress may and must fight for the principles of human rights and republican freedom, the ships themselves must be ruled and commanded at sea under a system of absolute despotism."
-John Paul Jones, Letter to the Naval Committee of Congress (14 September 1775)

Saoshyant Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship

Scheer had included the Deutschlands of the Second Squadron largely for sentimental reasons: it was his old squadron, and its commander, Rear Admiral Mauve, made an 'eloquent intercession' not to be left behind. One senses it was probably against Scheer's better judgement […]
- Paul G. Halpern, "A Naval History of World War 1"
The fleet's Achilles heel was the squadron of six slow pre-dreadnoughts which took up the rear and which were unkindly known as the 'Funf Minuten Schiffe', because that is how long they were expected to last when the Grand Fleet found them. Scheer should have left them behind in the Jade (or, more usefully, in the Baltic), but had yielded to pressure from their officers to take them along for the jaunt. After Dogger Bank, his less popular but clearer-thinking predecessor, Hugo von Pohl, had ruled that "the loss of the Blucher has brought the proof that the older ships cannot be taken into a battle".
- Andrew Gordon, "Rules of the Game"

Star Cruiser: $300*(10% Armor=$30) + $264 [$594/Upkeep: $125]
Accel: [1] 2-1 (Armor Penalty)
Armor: [3] 2+1
Endurance: 6+2
Weapons
+3x S4 Capital Laser ($15x12=$180)
+1x S4 Railguns ($8x4=$32)
+1x S4 Autocannon ($12x4=$48)
+1x S4 PDL ($1x4=$4): Cruiser Defense Guns
Systems
N/A

When Saoshyant was launched from slipyards in Earth orbit in response to the evolving Faerie Moon crisis centuries ago, shortly followed by Arahant, it was representative of what were then considered capital gunships. With a main battery of high power x-ray lasers alone as expensive as an entire fully kitted frigate it was often thought that these warships would

The Saoshyant was the centerpiece of a new strategy to totally defeat the enigmatic invaders, rather than merely weather the onslaught. It was expected that the Saoshyant and Arahant, in conjunction with a rotation of scout ships and a network of spy satellites progressively seeded throughout the Siyavash system, could intercept and destroy the mass-driver launched supply shipments from satellite outposts discovered throughout the system.

The Saoshyant class was then representative of a swathe of Solarian capital gunship designs obsoleted overnight by the launch of the UNS Dreadnought: bigger, faster, tougher, stronger, and smarter. While the Earth powers could relegate their old battleships to second line duties or retire them from service altogether, the Faerie Air Force could not give up such a centerpiece unit.

Ships of Class in Service:

Saoshyant
Arahant
Szent Marika
Tri Sviatitelia
Sword Saint Barahan
Yuhwasattva Pariya

White Yaksha Armored Carriers

One thing that emerged from the exercises, was that when the Americans were flying on or off, the whole fleet turned into the wind, but with our superior speed, we could turn out of line with two or three destroyers, put the foot down, complete flying, then back to join the fleet, who, in the meantime, had continued on their original course, thus saving time and fuel oil.
-Jim I. Gallie, RN, "HMS Victorious from Mar. 29, 1941 to Sept. 12, 1945"

Scout Cruiser: $150 + (10% Acceleration, 40% Modules=$75) + $90 [$315/Upkeep: $52]
Accel: 3
Armor: 1
Endurance: 6
Weapons
+2x S3 Standoff Missile ($15x6=$90)
+1x S3 PDL ($1x3=$3): Cruiser Defense Guns
Systems
+3x S3 Hangers (15 Deck Capacity)
+1x C3

Ships of Class in Service:

White Yaksha
Diiv Akvaan
Razgriz
Azhdaha

Swordfish

My Stringbag flies over the ocean,
My Stringbag flies over the sea.
If it weren't for King George's Swordfish,
Where the hell would the Royal Navy be?
20x Talons (Vergetech) [$12/Ukpeep: $2]

Fleet Train

Replenishment Ship [$20/Upkeep: $2]
Ships of Class in Service:

Svyatogor
Yuhwasattva Yoonha
Walmas Rohir
[fill in name]
[fill in name]

Scout

Scout [$30/Upkeep: $3]
The Fairie Air Force ordered a considerable number of Scout ships to track the movements of the . Somehow, the Collegium has regularly found budgets for modernizations keeping these ships apace with developments in stealth technology even as other more essential programs have continually slipped or been abandoned after wasting funds.
Ships of Class in Service:

Contre-Admiral Abdurakhman-Avtobachi
Conducător Sjevan
Yushin Sobeiski Sadaham

Regular and Republican Guard

Republic Commandos

3x Huscarls Brigade [$45/Upkeep: $9]
1x Emergency Service Cohort [$5/Upkeep: $1]

College of Princes

"And so Roland rides out, into that new-washed world of clear sun and glittering colour which we call the Middle Age […]: he is the Young Age as that age saw itself. Compared with him, the space-adventurers and glamour-boys of our times, no less than the hardened toughs of Renaissance epic, seem to have been born middle-aged."
-Dorothy L Sayers, 'Introduction', The Song of Roland (Penguin 1957), 17]

Harem of the Maripgan

The current dynasty of Maripgans were regional upstarts and soon found themselves at odds with the strong aristocracy that had elevated them to Royal power. Among many of their disputes was the size of the Maripgan's armed entourage, and in the fourth year of Kwangmin Isageum's reign the Hwabaek Council restricted his guard to no more than 2,000 men from families of good character. The loophole soon exploited was to expand the House of Women with almost ten thousand new Court Ladies and lower grade attendants who were chosen for their skills in horseback riding, archery, and musketry rather than for literacy and domestic work; for their own protection of course. While clearly a violation of spirit and not letter other factional bickering diverted attention from the issue, so the amazon regiments remained and progressively institutionalized even as the restriction was lifted in later years.
3x Huscarls Brigade [$45/Upkeep: $9]
1x Emergency Service Cohort [$5/Upkeep: $1]

Companies of Adventure

"Nought to wager!" cried the soldier. "Why, you have that which I covet above all things. It is that big body of thine that I am after. See, now, mon garcon. I have a French feather-bed there, which I have been at pains to keep these years back. I had it at the sacking of Issodun, and the King himself hath not such a bed. If you throw me, it is thine; but, if I throw you, then you are under a vow to take bow and bill and hie with me to France, there to serve in the White Company as long as we be enrolled." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 'Chapter VI. How Samkin Aylward Wagered His Feather-bed', The White Company
3x Huscarls Brigade [$45/Upkeep: $9]

Privateers

“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.”
-John Paul Jones, Letter to le Ray de Chaumont (17 November 1778)
Privateer: $40 + $24 [$64/Upkeep: 6]
Accel: 5
Weapons
+1x S1 PDL ($4)
+1x S2 Torpedoes ($10x2=$20)
x25 Privateers

Odette II Camoflauged Cruiser Leader

“Seriously? A girl’s school has a pirate ship?”
- Bodacious Space Pirates (2012)
Auxiliary Cruiser: $80*(+60% Armor, +20% Modules=$64) + $24 [$168/Upkeep: $15]
Accel: 2
Armor: [2] 0+2
Endurance: 8
TEU Capacity: 2
Weapons
+2x S2 Standard Laser ($5x4=$20)
+1x S2 PDL ($1x2)
+1x S2 PDL ($1x2): Cruiser Defense Guns
Systems
+1 C3
+1 Sensors
The Odette II is a high-passage liner operated by the Ehwa-Eskhata Women’s University as part of its substantial endowment, titled and registered in service of the Merchant Marine of the Maripganate of Gyerim, and the pride of the school’s large Yacht Club. Nothing seems amiss, as the education establishments on Siyavash are weighed heavily to producing spacers to meet the voracious demand for shipping to maintain their fragile economy. On closer inspection however the Odette II is one of the auxiliary cruisers launched by Fairie Air Force as it was suborned by the incipient Mercenary Cabal, serving with distinction – or infamy – as a leader for privateer wolfpacks under a procession of highly respected Captains. It somehow escaped destruction by the U.N. throughout the Mandate Mutiny and later , cementing a certain its fame in the halls of pirate legend even as it safely retired into obscurity.

While the Odette II is well armored, it eschews substantial armament outside of a powerful EW suite and concealed point defense laser ball-blisters, more than sufficient to threaten a merchantman but no more – except that the Captains of the ship discovered an unintended Mag-Sail configuration that could lens the ship’s overbuilt E-Mail laser into a deadly weapon. Even so, the ship’s primary and most capable defense is its seemingly innocent purpose.

Royal Yacht Hoopoe

"Dear hoopoe, welcome! You will be our guide;
It was on you King Solomon relied
To carry secret messages between
His court and distant Sheba's lovely Queen.
He knew your language and you knew his heart-
As his close confident you learned the art
Of holding demons captive underground,
And for those valiant exploits you were crowned."
- Attar Nishapuri, "Conference of the Birds"
Logistics Cruiser: $80 (+30% Modules=$36) + $34 [$114/Upkeep: $23]
Accel: 2
Armor: 0
Weapons
+3x S2 Standard Laser ($5x6)
+1x S2 PDL ($1x2)
+1x S2 PDL ($1x2): Cruiser Defense Guns
Systems
+Atmospheric Capability
+Lab
+Interstellar Rescue Module

Territories=

Siyavash System=

While the Siyavash system is named for its primary, it is actually a binary star system

Juraira
Frigis
Faroud
Algirdas Girdle
Kay Khosrow
Nemesis

Fairy Moon

Altai Krai

Traits

Positive

Admiralty

"'Monarch?' Helluva TAC name."

"Self-proclaimed?"

"Entire kingdoms are founded by people like him."

"He's still a merc."

"Not every king is just." - Master Goose 1 and Cascadian Pilots, 'Cold War', Project Wingman (2020)

Fanatics

"The gate to the new world has been opened. My soul shall be the wind that enters the gate. When the sleeping king awakes, my body, too, shall surely rise."
- Anton Kupchenko's Epitaph, 'The Demon of the Round Table', Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War (2006)

Negative

History

A Pair of Mysteries

Scattered references in the derelict archeotechnology of the Quon hinted at the prior settlement of the Siyavash system, unique among the many colonies of the antecedent civilization as a sort of Hotel des Invalides of the warrior caste on the scale of a whole binary solar system of Siyavash and Frigis – the Kshatriya Stars. With all astronavigation indicators pointing beyond the jump limits of what would become the Core Worlds, the disinterested Great Powers of Earth left a melee of second-string powers to squabble over the clues to this system thought to have multiple habitable biospheres and a potential trove of Quon technologies, occasionally chumming the waters with new bait on behalf of one particular favorite or another. After decades of meticulous searching the bounds of known space had long leapfrogged past the frustratingly barren probabilities, and the now threadbare dream frayed into away into the faerie dust of fugazi before the disenchanted eyes of the empty-handed.

Much to the consternation of all involved it would be the UN Survey Command itself that finally succeeded in determining the jump point to the Kshatriya Stars when hopes of discovery seemed exhausted, deploying the Scout ship [insert name], but even this late triumph was soured by the realization that they were already very late guests to the dinner party.

High resolution sensors aimed at the system's earthlike world – crackling with the squawk and warble of early spark radio technology – almost immediately detected the corpse of a massive 'reefership' trailing a veil of intermingled debris along a slowly decaying orbit parallel the planetary ring. As an away team secured the wreck it became clear that Siyavash had become the final tomb of the legendary ghost ship Mugunghwa from the early days of the colony race, a joint Iranian-Korean "reefership" venture to the developing colony of Parsis, long assumed lost with its entire passage of several hundred thousand souls. Worse still was the battle damage scarring the hull and the traces of a desperate armed struggle perfectly preserved in one airless compartment after another that seemed to confirm the darkest theories of the ship's fate. Hence the crew of the [scout ship name] were at first relieved, then alarmed, to find that rather than a mausoleum on a stupendous scale the self-contained cryogenic trays of the Mugunghwa were totally empty, their charges launched like so many acorns by a crash-emergency procedure onto the habitable world below according to the computer systems they were able to coax back to life and, later, the black box.

The now already obsolete cryogenics technology of the Mugunghwa's time were notoriously risky when operating under proper procedures, much less a crash-landing onto a primitive post-Quon world utterly unprepared to receive them and on which they had never been briefed. Determining the fate of the many thousands embarked on the colony ship was a race against time already many years behind according to the radioactive decay clock contained within the ghost ship's black box. Extra-Solar command dreaded the political time bomb they had uncovered, but the reports from [insert name] could only be suppressed for so long under the intense scrutiny of the sponsoring powers.

The governments involved in the Mugunghwa consortium, besieged by the families of those once presumed deceased, gathered votes for a resolution to overturn Mandate authority over the Kshatriya Stars they claimed prevented them from initiating independent search and rescue missions for their lost nationals. Simultaneously many key officials deflected responsibility for the Mugunghwa's mysterious hijacking onto Gateway and demanded answers for its loss, implicitly questioning the Mandate system's failure to protect so many souls.

Collegium (Ruins 2)